Six people have been shot dead in two days in a crime-ridden area of Cape Town, intensifying concerns over the city’s entrenched gang-related violence.
Police said that at 11.30pm on Monday, two women aged 19 and 25 were killed and a 24-year-old woman injured in a shooting in Wallacedene, an informal settlement on the city’s north-eastern outskirts. Around ten minutes later, two other women in their 20s were found shot in the head in a bedroom in the same area. Investigators believe the incidents may be linked.
The killings followed the deaths of two people, aged 20 and 22, in neighbouring Eikendal on Sunday. Police did not disclose their genders.
The latest incidents come after a man was shot dead at a magistrates’ court on 5 September in suspected gang violence, the third killing in a Cape Town court since April.
Cape Town is among the most violent cities in one of the most violent countries in the world. According to UN Office on Drugs and Crime data, South Africa’s murder rate is exceeded only by Jamaica and Ecuador. Figures from Mexican NGO Seguridad Justicia y Paz show Cape Town had the second highest murder rate of any South African municipality last year, behind Nelson Mandela Bay, and ranked 16th globally.
Despite attracting more than 2.4 million visitors in 2024, drawn by its beaches, mountains and vineyards, the city remains starkly divided between affluent suburbs and the Cape Flats townships, where non-white residents were forcibly relocated under apartheid’s Group Areas Act of 1950.
“Our communities are fearful,” said Lynn Phillips of the Cape Flats Safety Forum at an anti-gang protest last week. “We don’t have to switch on Netflix to hear gun violence. We sleep, we eat, and we wake up with gun violence.”
Western Cape police said last week they were conducting “targeted operations” in Cape Flats hotspots to seize firearms and ammunition. “Illegal firearms and those who profit from them have no place in our communities,” a statement read. “Our operations will continue without fear or favour, until gangsterism and the violence associated with it are rooted out of the Western Cape.”
Acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia told residents on Tuesday that local police lacked the capacity for “intelligence-driven operations” to tackle gangs and organised crime effectively. “There is no proper plan in Cape Town to deal with gang violence in the province,” he said.
Police data show more than 26,000 people were murdered in South Africa last year, with almost 3,500 of those killings in Cape Town.
